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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Jason Pettus

I've been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year now. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community.

After hoarding the photos and essays I've been collecting from these guys since July of 2012, and with the promise of spring peeking its deliciously sunny head out through all of this winter gloom, I decided there was no better time than now to finally unveil THE INDIE INK RUNS DEEP mini-series!

Back when I was an undergraduate, I decided to celebrate my 21st birthday with a rite of passage, by doing something I had always wanted to do but had always been afraid of; the original plan was to get my first tattoo, but I ultimately chickened out and got my ear pierced instead (which turned out to be pretty terrifying indeed, in that my starter stud got stuck in the gun that shot it through my ear, and they had to twist and turn it to no end of intense pain). Ten years later, I decided to finally make a go of it with a tattoo; it was the late '90s and I was living in Chicago by then, and was a writer myself at the time so decided to get a copyright symbol inked on my shoulder, done by someone who was a fellow participant in what at the time was Chicago's large poetry-slam community. It took about an hour and was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, which is what has kept me from getting any others besides this.

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Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.